Is it possible to order Japanese books from outside Japan? Will they accept non-Japanese credit cards? Thanks

That has traditionally been a hurdle when dealing with Japanese e-commerce, it seems the surcharges by the Japanese VISA etc are substantial for foreign currency transactions, a relic from the days when Tokyo Bank had a monopoly on foreign exchange. That leaves little margin for profit, hence the reluctancy to sell to customers with foreign issues credit cards.

These Kindles are actually cheaper than those in the US (normal version is around the equivalent of $105 US) and I don't see any mention of advertisements on the Kindle itself.
Not sure about prices. I just checked out Anthony Everitt's The Rise of Rome on Amazon and it costs me 2,091 yen. I can get it on the Kobo book store for 1,498 yen and if I use one of the coupons that brings it down to around 950 yen. I don't know about other books but if that's what the prices are like then I definitely wont be buying from the Kindle bookstore.

They’re promising to stock a total of over 50,000 Japanese-language Kindle books and 15 thousand maga titles, including over 10 thousand free Japanese-language titles and a broad selection of works from a wide range of leading Japanese authors and publishers. Amazon is also boasting that that the Kindle Store will stock titles from the various top 100 books, top 50 bunko, and top 100 manga lists in addition to the million plus titles found elsewhere in the Kindle Store.

For comparison:

Quote:

Getting back to the ebooks: 50,000 ebooks, can you believe it? When Kobo launched in Japan they only barely managed to stock 18 thousand local titles, most of which were free titles. And as we all know, the rest of Kobo’s launch in that country went about as badly as could be.

I'm glad that Amazon finally decided to open it's Japanese Kindle store.

Not so glad that they wouldn't allow international orders.

Anyway, did anyone with a Japanese IP found a sudden increase in the .com kindle prices? Like, in some cases 50-100%, or more.

I tried to contact customer service, and cited Ben Goldacre's Bad Pharma (which changed from 9.99 to 17.63), and their reply was that this (and his previous book) is currently not available for US customers o.O